WCU union president optimistic labor deal can be reached

WEST CHESTER — The president of the union representing West Chester University’s faculty said she is optimistic contract negotiations will be resolved without a strike.

Lisa Millhous, a professor of Communication Studies and president of the local chapter of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculty, said that while the strike authorization vote was being held on campus from Monday until Wednesday, the hopes of negotiating a new contract remain. The union is in talks with the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, which includes 14 colleges and universities, including West Chester and Cheyney.

Millhous said she has been at the university for four contract negotiations and each one has had a strike authorization vote, but the union has never actually exercised its right to strike.

“The faculty doesn’t want to strike, because this is not about salaries, it’s about our ability to continue our careers and ensure that the university remains top-notch,” Millhous said. “But I think we are resolved to go through with it, if we have to.”

The faculty has been working without a contract since June 2011.

Millhous said about 85 percent of the faculty had voted as of about 4 p.m. Tuesday with six hours of voting left, and she expected about a 90-to-95 percent of faculty members to vote to authorize the strike. She said she could not predict a date for a strike, but would not expect it to happen until the beginning of the new year, if at all.

The two sides met on Friday and the state system dropped its proposal to cut the salary for temporary, or adjunct, faculty by 35 percent. Instead, the new proposal calls for no change in full-time adjunct salaries and a freeze on part-time temporary salaries for the life of the contract. Union leadership at the state level has said that the new proposal is a good first step, but does not go far enough.

Millhous said the movement on Friday was both good and bad. She said Friday was only the second time the system has moved to the middle during the nearly two years of negotiations and the movement is a sign that “suggests that maybe they’re trying to resolve this.” But, she added the movement only came in the shadows of the looming strike authorization vote and that compromise only in the midst of threats by the union is not the best way to negotiate.

There is meeting between the two sides scheduled for Dec. 11.

Millhous said the union has stayed at the table to negotiate longer this time around than it has in past. However, she said the union is unsure how things will progress because under former Gov. Ed Rendell, the union would receive his support and he would step in to help resolve the issues. She said Gov. Tom Corbett may not be “as friendly to higher education” and his position has not been made clear.